The NASA section spun out of the work of scientist David Morrison, who talked with NPR about the phenomenon last week.

“Many people don’t know what they’re afraid of,” Morrison told NPR’s Neal Conan, “but they have heard this doomsday thing so often that they just come to me with a simple question: Will we have Christmas this year?”

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Morrison writes NASA’s “Ask An Astrobiologist” column and says he has been asked more than 5,000 questions about 2012 doomsday scenarios since 2008 or so.

He says the need for a 2012 debunking section came from a very real worry that some people were contemplating suicide over the rumours.

“It least a once a week I get a message from a young person ― as young as 11 ― who says they are ill and/or contemplating suicide because of the coming doomsday,” he said in the U.S. government news release about the launch of the site.

If there were anything out there like a planet headed for Earth, it would already be the brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon

Less real is Julia Gillard’s video where she expressed, with absolute certainty, that the world is coming to an end by the end of the year.

“Whether the final blow comes from flesh eating zombies, demonic hellbeasts or the total triumph of K-Pop,” Gillard said in the video. “If you know one thing about me, it is this: I will always fight for you, to the very end.”

She then says that the upside of the world ending is that she will no longer have to do Q&A again, referring to the Australian version of Question Period in parliament.

Go out and look. It’s not there

Gillard’s message was, perhaps, less of a doomsday proclamation and more of a promotional piece for a morning radio show.

Of course, Gillard’s message probably won’t sway people one way or the other on their fears that a giant planet named Nibiru hurdling toward the Earth.

“If there were anything out there like a planet headed for Earth,” Morrison told NPR, “it would already be the brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon. Everybody on Earth could see it.

“Go out and look. It’s not there. You don’t need to ask the government or me, just use your eyes. There’s no interloper out there headed into the solar system.”